Leveraging Faculty Expertise
A massive pool of potential educational technology mentorship and support resources at any university are the faculty themselves. Capitalizing on that pool provides any teaching center greater influence and reach.
Faculty-to-Faculty Mentorship
When arriving at SUNY Oneonta in 2017 to Direct the TLTC (Teaching, Leaning & Technology Center) I conducted a gap analysis. One gap area was leveraging faculty expertise. So I implemented a new project to tap that underused resource: Faculty Fellows. It's goal: Recognize and capitalize on faculty expertise.
I had previously implemented a similar program at The Higher Colleges of Technology men's campus in Abu Dhabi, called Tech Stars (2012-2014). Tech Stars helped faculty learn how to use various iPad apps in the classroom or how to use authoring tools to create online digital resources, such as with SoftChalk.
Due to the success of the Tech Stars program, at SUNY Oneonta I wanted to implement something similar again. So we, 1) put out a call for faculty interested in sharing their expertise on one tool of choice, 2) reviewed applications, and 3) chose a selection of faculty for the program. The selected Faculty Fellows received a stipend in exchange for, 1) being a go-to resource for support and mentorship of other faculty wishing to learn how to use that tool in the classroom or for research, 2) a few training sessions per year at a couple of main professional development events we planned, 3) recognition of their leadership excellence at our website.
The Tea for Teaching podcast interviewed two of the TLTC team members in fall of 2019 on the program, which can be heard at this podcast:
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